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Progressive and conservative politics were invented two hundred years ago, when modernization and progress were sweeping away privilege and challenging the status quo. They are no longer relevant now that modernization and progress are the status quo.

The Preservation Institute is dedicated to developing a new politics that recognizes the limits of technology and growth.

The Politics of Simple Living: Our political thinking has not caught up with the unprecedented economic change that happened in America during the twentieth century, the change from a scarcity economy to a surplus economy. This book decribes a new politics of simple living that could help solve environmental problems such as global warming.

Classical Liberalism: This book rediscovers a lost tradition of liberal thought, classical liberalism, which believed in positive freedom, the right of people to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves. It shows that, to accommodate economic growth, laissez-faire and modernist liberalism redefined freedom as negative, as nothing more than the absence of government control. To revitalize the liberal tradition for our time, we need to revive the classical ideal of positive freedom.

Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices: The conventional wisdom says that we need strict planning to build neighborhoods like the streetcar suburbs that were common in America before anyone heard of city planning. This book uses an intriguing thought experiment to show that direct political limits on urban growth can transform our cities more effectively than planning.